


Unnecessary

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: Give Me The News [4]
Category: St. Elsewhere
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 08:13:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17056127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Victor dealing with losing a patient for the first time in 'Baron von Munchausen'





	Unnecessary

    This…

 

_Your fault_

 

   This has never happened before.

 

   Well, he’s only done it once before at all, and that time hadn’t _(the gun)_ been great, but his patient lived, even with a madwoman waving a gun and a crappy taco around, the guy had been fine in the end, full recovery.

 

   But this…

 

 _All your fault_.

 

   He hadn’t understood Jack’s position at all when they had argued beforehand. The patient was on board with the surgery, it was supposed to be pretty low-risk all things considered. And sure, Jack would probably just say there’s no such thing as a low-risk exploratory surgery, but that’s just not true, maybe it’s invasive, but that doesn’t mean risk. No more than anything _unless your surgeon is Victor Ehrlich, the world’s clumsiest idiot_ else, no more risk than a lot of things which people had done all the time.

 

   The worst part _aside from the fact that you killed a man_ is that he and Jack were finally friends, like… like real friends. Like… since somewhere since he cleared his sprained hand and with everything else _(she nearly shot at you!)_ he finally got the hang of things. Finally really got to start palling around with people. Not everyone, but enough people. Not just Wayne, but Jack Morrison and Philip Chandler, got to be on a first name basis with more of the guys so it was comfortable and it didn’t feel awkward, or he doesn’t think it does _but it probably does it always is_. He could safely say they were friends, Jack wasn’t just nice to him because he was nice to everyone, he’d been nice to him because they’d known each other for a while now and he’d told him about a really good, really authentic Mexican restaurant, they’d had a taco barbacoa that could bring a stronger man to tears, and it wasn’t fish, it wasn’t Baja, but it was _good_ , he’d _liked_ it, it felt nice to come into work and say ‘hey I tried that place you told me about and wow!’, it had… it had been good with just about everybody.

 

   And things _were_ good, right up until Victor killed his patient, and now they’ll never be good again and what if it’s not just Jack? Oh, he’d always have Fiscus, sure, and so would the grout in his bathroom, but would the other surgical residents feel too friendly now that Victor had lost a patient? Knowing his stuff as a surgeon was the closest thing to social cache he had, and now that’s gone. Until Craig sees fit to give him another chance to prove himself, he’s certainly not the golden boy anymore, he’s not anything. Maybe Phil won’t want to talk to him, either, maybe Wendy won’t. Why should they, if he’s not good at the one thing he’s there to be good at, the one thing they’re all there to be good at? What else does he have to offer?

 

   When Rizzo had agreed to the surgery, he was still ‘Victor’, in a distant and brittle kind of a way he could barely really figure, but he’s ‘Ehrlich’ again when Jack comes in to tell him off for _killing a man_ losing his patient. Does he still get to call him Jack or does he have to go back to Morrison? Is it a two-way street, first names? He doesn’t know the rules _not that it matters, what matters is a man is dead, Victor, and it was your job to save him. You didn’t. You couldn’t._ Left alone in the room, with just the guilt and frustration and confusion, the question of how you fix being friends with someone when you killed a person they were trying to save, and he likes Jack Morrison a lot, everybody does, but Victor really does, because Wayne’s usually a really good friend and all and he doesn’t mind if Victor’s a little _whackadoodle, that’s what they all think, isn’t it?_ different sometimes, a little off-beat now and then… but he’s always bouncing around himself and he’s not like Victor is but he’s… But he doesn’t do the thing Phil and Jack sometimes do, if they notice, that seamless way of playing catch-up when Victor misses something stupid that everyone else knows-- and so sue him! So he knows what he knows, he knows a lot about surgery _a lot about how to let a man die on the operating table_ and he doesn’t know about football or basketball and he’s a little behind-the-times with popular culture, he’s focused on his career. So sue him. _They might, you know, sue you, because you killed a man and he didn’t even need surgery because you didn’t even find anything before you lost him you lost him you killed him_. He knows a lot of things other people don’t! He’s really good with Latin and he’s _he thought he was_ really good with surgery, and he can dance the foxtrot and he’s great on a surfboard, he’s never been clumsy at all within _sight_ of the Pacific Ocean! It’s just dumb stuff he doesn’t know that somehow everyone else does, like sports and who’s famous right this second and _how to be a fucking human being sometimes_ social etiquette, he guesses.

 

   He cries, just a little, just silently. He understands why he’s frustrated and why he’s guilty and why he’s confused, but there’s a wash of grief  he doesn’t understand, when he hadn’t hardly known the man, only met him a couple times. He’d liked him fine, sure, even though they probably wouldn’t have much in common and wouldn’t have been friends out in the world or anything, hell, Victor had gotten lucky when he wasn’t sure whether Rizzo was talking about wrestling or boxing and he’d just had to guess one and then nod like an idiot as the conversation flowed, but he’d narrowed it down and he’d picked the one he was pretty sure was right and he hadn’t even thought it was right because of any kind of… sports trivia, he’d guessed Gorgeous George was a wrestler because of a gag in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But that was when he and Jack were still friends, so Jack wasn’t going to call him out in front of the guy and say ‘this man doesn’t know wrestling from boxing, he tries to fake it being one of the guys and we can all tell but we let him anyway’, but now they’re not friends, now Jack hates his guts and Jack doesn’t hate anybody, Jack even likes White and White almost gets his patients killed all the time _but this is medicine, not horseshoes or hand grenades, almost doesn’t count. You saved one of White’s patients when he was coding, but you didn’t save yours_.

 

   He gives himself about two minutes to get the frustration out, and then he’s left with the guilt, the confusion _it was supposed to be routine_ , the strange inexplicable weight of grief for a near-stranger _for a victim, Victor Ehrlich-the-Butcher_. He cleans up, not that he can wash away the stench of _death_ failure. Gets his own clothes back on and doesn’t bother brushing his hair, even though that’s the routine. _Dr. Craig’s not going to care about whether or not your personal grooming is up to snuff, he’s going to care that you snuffed out a patient, going to be angry disappointed never going to choose you again for anything but answers you don’t have in lectures maybe if you’re lucky he’ll let you remove skin tags._

 

   He finds on call empty _remember when everything was good, remember then, before you killed Jack’s patient? Remember how he joked with you and you weren’t even really friends yet? Remember how nice he was, well that’s all over, baby, you’ll never pal around with Jack Morrison again because he hates you, and he’s right_ and he switches the light right back off once he sees it is empty, crosses in the dark and pulls himself up to the top bunk in the dark, and he’s too tall for the bed and he can never straighten his legs and it’s fine he guesses, it’s fine, it’s not like he deserves comfort today, but he’s so crushingly aware of it, so aware of how he doesn’t fit the world and he never will.

 

   Jack was right. There’s always a risk, and Victor had been excited. He had been. He’d wanted to take the lead on another surgery, he’d wanted to prove himself, he’d wanted… what? He’d wanted to help the patient, of course, of course he had, that’s the point, but _you wanted to be a big man, you wanted to impress No_ help _No impress, impress Craig, impress the other residents to impress_ No. No. He’d wanted to make a difference. But of course he had wanted Craig to think he’d done well, to maybe say something. Sometimes someone told him Craig had said he’d done well but Craig never said it to him and he wanted him to, he wanted to find something no one else had been able to find, fine! Fine, he’d wanted that! He’d wanted Craig to tell him he’d done a good job, he’d wanted Jack to thank him for contributing something meaningful, he’d wanted Rizzo to think he was a good surgeon and to like him, to say… he doesn’t know. To say this was one of his better surgical experiences. To say anything! Just to _like_ him! Which he _can’t_ , because Victor _killed him_ let him die, and Dr. Craig won’t respect him and Jack hates him, and it’s his own fault for being too eager to dig around inside the poor man. He’d been overconfident. Ready to overlook the risks, there are always risks, what had he been thinking?

 

   He hadn’t been. Not critically and not carefully. Oh, he hadn’t thought about it at all, he’d just thought it would all be so _easy_.

 

   He must have fallen asleep. That’s what he thinks, when Jack appears to offer him an apology. He fell asleep and now he’s dreaming. He’d thought it would be another lecture, the crushing weight of Jack’s disappointment now that the anger had worn off. But an apology, _absolution_ … He doesn’t understand any of it-- doesn’t understand for long enough that he feels downright stupid. Makes a fool of himself. Grabs onto Jack Morrison’s hand like a lifeline and doesn’t let go when he’s supposed to, but Jack lets him and doesn’t make a big deal out of it.

 

   There are some things, Victor thinks, that could be forgiven, when you’ve just been told it wasn’t your fault that a patient died _with you inside him working on him_ on the operating table, that it wasn’t anything you or anyone else could have stopped.

 

   Are they friends again? He doesn’t know a not-weird way of asking that.

 

   The next day at lunch, White is already sitting next to Jack Morrison, at the table with Phil and Wendy and Kiley, and there’s one empty seat, but even if Victor could ask something so stupidly childish as ‘are we friends again’, he couldn’t ask it in front of White, he doesn’t want to have to sit with White at all. White has been… more, somehow, lately. More uncomfortable to be around even when he’s mostly acting just fine. Because he mostly does treat everyone fine except for Victor, but it’s no easier to explain, he can only really trust that he knows what he’s noticing because Phil had noticed it too. But White doesn’t mess with Phil, not unless they’re arguing about a patient, it’s not like how he is to Victor.

 

   He eats with Wayne, and asks him if he’d heard anything whatsoever, about how Victor had done the other day, and figures if anything was important, he’d get an answer. And if it’s not important then it doesn’t matter, does it?

 

   He’s not sure where exactly things stand, as of now. He’s friends with pretty much everyone he was friends with yesterday. Craig didn’t even yell at him. It’s just that maybe now it’s Victor-and-Jack or maybe now it’s Ehrlich-and-Morrison, or maybe it’s just going to be back and forth some, and he won’t know how to figure it out and he’ll be a step behind…

 

   But whatever they are today, Morrison doesn’t hate him, so whatever amends he might have to make for being so eager to cut, he could make them. And he’s friends with-- well, with everyone, but he’s friends with the surgical residents as much as the medical residents, he’s friends with Victor’s other friends, so…

 

   So things are probably just normal.

 

   He doesn’t think he’s ever been ‘normal’ before, he’s always far off to one end or the other, but if this is it, he doesn’t think it’s half bad.


End file.
